


The Death of an Unwell Man

by Wasuremono



Category: Parker Pyne - Agatha Christie
Genre: Background Femslash, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: After a client of Parker Pyne dies during a choreographed intrigue, the agency struggles to uncover the truth about the incident.





	The Death of an Unwell Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greenet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenet/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! It was great fun to try and flex my mystery-writing muscles here, although I've got nothing on the master herself.

Madeleine de Sara's profession introduced her to a great many tedious men, but her current client presented an unusual variation on the theme. On paper, Walter Penrose fit the precise pattern of the younger sort of client of the Pyne agency: a scion of some corporate family, bored into stupor by his routine, convinced that he was destined for some adventure that would demonstrate his true character. (Like most such young men, the character he had demonstrated thus far ran towards the vainglorious and oblivious.) What distinguished Walter from his fellows was a sort of restless energy. Most men who found themselves in smoky nightclubs with Madeleine would relax and enjoy the moment, ignoring the unfolding intrigues, but Walter's eyes darted around the room as if he expected thugs to burst in any moment. It was almost unflattering.

Frankly, the intrigue of the night wasn't even worth Walter's rapt attention. It was a rather standard sort of plot: Madeleine as a young French singer being pursued by a caddish "admirer," in need of a companion and protector until she could leave England behind. Walter had, of course, been gallant in accepting this responsibility and had followed her lead to this out-of-the-way club. The conversation had not been scintillating -- Penrose exercised even more perfunctory an interest in her story than most of her clients -- and Madeleine was anxious for the next scene of the drama to play out. Any minute now, she thought, and sipped her drink. She could practically tell the time by the idle tapping of Walter's hands, striking his gaudy tie tack against the table in an odd non-rhythm.

There was a murmur from the back of the crowd, near the door: the show, at last, going on. Barging through the crowd, with only a slight pause to pretend to find their table, was Claude Luttrell, in full flower of his current obsessive role. ("One so rarely gets to do anything different in this job," he'd said to Madeleine the night before. "At least you have different accents.") Claude strode across the room, fire in his eyes, voice roaring even above the crowd. "Philomène! My jewel! At last I've found you!"

Madeleine stumbled from her seat and began to work up a decent screen, but Walter was quicker to intercept. "Sir," he said, one hand smoothing back his thick black hair, "the lady wants nothing to do with you."

"Oh, but you lie! She --"

"She wants _nothing_ to do with you," said Walter, with careful enunciation -- oddly careful, Madeleine thought, for a man whose face was contorting with rage.. He grabbed the back of his chair, as if to steady himself. "Get... leave her be, or I'll..."

Whatever he planned to do, the thought was lost as he went pale and fell to the floor, carrying his chair down with him. Claude made a startled noise at the back of his throat and recoiled, while Madeleine rushed to the fallen man's side. Walter's rictus of rage seemed stuck, as if the rigors of death had taken him in one fell swoop, and when Madeleine pressed her fingers to his wrist, she could feel no sign of a pulse. 

"He's --" It was almost too ghastly to say, and the boredom of the evening seemed almost grotesque now. "He's dead."

* * *

There was little notice in the press of the death of Walter Penrose. Inquiries by Parker Pyne revealed only that heart failure had been indicated, connected to some vague childhood infirmity, and that the Penrose family were not inclined to pursue the issue further. Further digging revealed a simple set of biographic facts: that Walter had been the eldest of the six Penrose children, heir apparent to Penrose Pharmaceutical; that he had worked as a researcher for the family firm, with adequate skill but indifferent motivation; that he'd been married for two years, with an infant daughter. The wife and daughter were no surprise, of course. It had been the young Louise Penrose who had called upon Parker Pyne to arrange for her husband's "adventure." He'd been restless, she'd said, since the baby was born, and it seemed like such a simple thing to buy him an evening of excitement and happiness.

Perhaps it was a simple thing. Perhaps it had not been. As he looked into Walter Penrose, dead and sunken without trace, Parker Pyne began to develop the uncomfortable feeling that he'd been had.

"The timing," he said to his companion four days after the incident, "is the most questionable element. Natural agitation of the heart is rarely so convenient, even in someone as excitable as Penrose seemed to be. From the way Madeleine describes it, his mood was unnatural the whole night. A pharmaceutical researcher, a bored young man. Drugs, do you think?"

"Oh, it's plausible," mused Ariadne Oliver, leaning back in Pyne's office chair before biting down on an apple. She chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed. "Perhaps that's why the family dealt with it so quickly and quietly. Better a tragedy than a drug-taking scandal, after all, especially for a family of druggists. Are you sure you don't want an apple?"

"Quite sure," replied Parker Pyne. In his own office, he preferred to take only tea or coffee; meals eaten hastily over a desk made him think too much of his former career, a thought he hardly needed. "Self-inflicted overdose, then. Or was it? Do you think the family knew? If he was in the habit of specific dosages at specific times, that's very readily tampered with. They wouldn't have difficulty acquiring an appropriate substance." He thought of Louise Penrose again: small, pale, fastidious. She seemed the sort of woman who would know her husband's habits, and who could well have despised them, and him by extension. 

"It's certainly possible, but..." Ariadne Oliver set down her apple core, thankfully not on anything of value. "You're going to think I'm mad, but there's something I want to look into. Did you know, Mr Pyne, that I once met Walter Penrose?"

"And you didn't bother to mention it?"

"I only just realized that -- well. I met him at a book signing. He was quite vocal about loving my work -- brought a half-dozen of the books in. Absolute monomaniac. I've got an idea about all this. Give me a day or two to investigate, and I'll call you if this bears any fruit."

Parker Pyne simply nodded, a part of him gratified that Mrs Oliver's urge for fieldwork didn't require his participation. "See that you do."

* * *

Ariadne Oliver double-checked that the door to the telephone room was closed thoroughly. The patrons of the Shield and Bell seemed uninterested in her, but if there was one thing she had learned from her day of investigation in the little town of Castle Weyford, it was that everyone seemed acquainted with the Penrose family. It was best not to draw too much attention to herself, she'd decided. Of course, every quiet inquiry she'd made about Walter Penrose had been met with the same tone: a sort of disengaged, almost disinterested mourning. Even the young parish priest who'd shown her about the graveyard seemed to have put the matter out of mind. "Poor Walter," he'd said as they'd walked the stone path to the graveyard, snow crunching underfoot. "He wasn't a well man." It seemed that all of Castle Weyford thought that way: that poor Walter Penrose was better left quietly in his grave, and that even an eccentric author come to pay her respects might be more attention than seemed proper. Of course, then there was the grave itself -- And the phone call to Parker Pyne. As she fumbled her way through ringing the number, nervousness was finally being replaced with pride, and a sort of manic excitement. Could this honestly be so _simple?_ "Mr Pyne," she said, once the connection went through, "I've got it. I should have known right away -- for a drug researcher, such a simple trick --"

Parker Pyne's voice at the other ended was guarded and somewhat unamused. Perhaps the man was still nursing his wounded pride.

"And what simple trick is this?"

"Tetrodotoxin! Surely you've heard of it? It's a sort of pufferfish poison; it kills with paralysis. Awful way to die, they tell me. Well, the trick of it is, it doesn't always kill you. It can put you so near death most people can't tell the difference. I had Hjerson deal with it in his American book -- some sort of Caribbean magical ritual, I think; a bit contrived, but aren't they all --"

"Mrs Oliver. Are you saying Walter Penrose was killed with magical American fish poison?"

"That Caribbean book was Penrose's favorite. He told me himself. I think he would have had access to it and been able to figure out a proper dosage to feign death. You see, I went to the graveyard, and -- his grave's been dug up."

"Are you certain? It's a fresh grave, regardless."

"It snowed the past two days, Mr Pyne, and froze over last night. Someone'd covered it over again, of course, but the snow was clearly disturbed."

"Hmm." Pyne didn't exactly sound convinced, but he never did. Ariadne knew how skeptical he was of her intuition, and this in particular seemed a bit of a thin thread, but she figured any thread at all would satisfy Pyne's need for some sort of resolution. She waited a beat, then another, until at last his reply proved her right. 

"Very well. I'll take it from here. I believe it's time to speak to Mrs Penrose."

* * *

Parker Pyne was greeted at the door of the Penrose family home by a dark-haired, ruddy young woman, the sort whose strong features seemed almost more handsome with her dressed in mourning black. "I'm Anne Penrose," she said. "You're here to see Louise? She's in a rather fragile mood, you know."

"I know. I hope to take very little of her time. She told me this would be a fine time to call on her."

"Well," said Anne skeptically, "if she said so." She led Pyne down a hallway to a sitting room done in an uncomfortably modern style: clean modernity, he supposed, for a family of scientists. In the whites and grays of the room, the black-clad pale figure of Louise Penrose almost seemed like some hoary Victorian ghost. There was no tea, no biscuits or sandwiches; this would be a brief conversation.

"Mrs Penrose," Parker Pyne said. "I won't trouble you for long. May we speak in confidence?"

Louise Penrose lowered her head, shoulders tense, like a shameful schoolgirl. "We'd better, I think. If it lets this whole thing be put behind us."

"Then let me be frank. When, and why, did your husband decide to fake his death?"

"I think he'd decided on it before we were married. He just... _we_ just... couldn't decide when it would be all right to do it. He wanted to make sure I'd be taken care of, afterwards -- I don't have any family of my own. At first we thought that just being his fiancée would be enough, but eventually we decided that there would have to be a grandchild for his parents to worry about."

"You make it sound selfless. With all due respect, Mrs. Penrose, this is not the act of a selfless man."

"Oh, no, of course not, but he didn't..." Louise Penrose raised his head and met Pyne's gaze, faint color coming to her cheeks. Suddenly, there was a great bravery about her, a bravery greater for being so rare. "Our marriage was of mutual convenience. Neither of us are the marrying kind, but Walter was expected to be married, and I... I met Anne at boarding school. We swore not to be parted. So when her brother needed to marry someone who understood..."

The puzzle was taking shape. The defensiveness of the handsome woman in the hallway took on a different shade. "I see."

"Walter thought the noose might loosen a bit once he was engaged and working in the labs, but it only tightened. They wanted him to learn business, wanted all his time spoken for. I think he really did think of himself as a snared rabbit, but he wanted me to be secure here first. For Anne's sake, perhaps, as much as mine."

"But why the theatrics? Why not a quiet escape?"

Louise grinned -- no, Pyne thought, she grimaced. "He always had a head for excitement, for a show. I wanted him to take care of it at home, but he had his silly plan. An ampule of poison in his tie tack, of all the things, and a network of friends to get him buried and unburied! That friend in the coroner's office, and even Father Thatcher, of all the people... he could be very charming, when he wanted to be. He read silly novels, got silly ideas, and then he sold you on them. I suppose that's why we were married in the first place."

Compliments were due to Mrs Oliver, it seemed. "Very well. You understand, though, that my staff are distraught. What am I to tell them, besides that they were caught in your husband's theatrics?"

"Tell them that they did their jobs. You advertise that you'll make people happy, don't you? Well, wherever Walter is, he's happy. We'll be happy here, too, and if you ask me, the rest of the family'll be happy without him to worry about. Tell your office that I've received exactly what I've paid for."

* * *

"It's a rotten trick," said Claude Luttrell, before another sip of gin. "Absolutely rotten."

"You realize, of course," replied Madeleine de Sara, "that plenty of people would say that we're in the rotten-tricks business ourselves. I suppose they'd say that turnabout is fair play."

"Yes, but..." Claude raised his glass again, took the last trickle of gin, and stared down into the empty glass with a distinct expression of unpleasant surprise. "There's a difference between what we do and what he did. We don't _frighten_ people. We give them a little thrill, but there's always a happy ending. If Mr Pyne hadn't tracked the widow down, were they just going to let us think we'd killed a man?"

"Probably. You know how that sort are, Claude: always selfish to the hired help. If there's any justice in this world, he's going to anger a bartender down on the Riviera and wash up on the beach three days later." 

"And he won't look any worse than he did on the floor of that club. The absolute _gall_ of it..."

Claude could pretend all he liked that he was indignant, but Madeleine de Sara knew him too well, and she could see the lingering fear and sickness in his eyes at the thought of Walter Penrose. She wanted to tell him that he hadn't had to grab that stiff wrist and press down on the clammy skin to try and find the missing pulse -- but, really, what use was there in that? They couldn't wallow in it. This was part of their trade, after all: pacifying the selfish, first, and tripping over death.

"I know, I know. But it'll fade, and in the meantime, we've got a nice band, and I'll buy another round of drinks. Let's dance, Claude."

Even gripped with his fear and sickness, Claude Luttrell danced like a dream. It was enough, that night, to make Madeleine de Sara forget.


End file.
